Liechtenstein Monarch Will Keep Veto Powers After Referendum

July 1 (Bloomberg) -- Liechtenstein’s hereditary monarch
retained his veto powers after winning a referendum sparked by
his threat to block moves to legalize abortion in the Alpine
principality.

Citizens of the Manhattan-sized country voted 76 percent to
24 percent in favor of Prince Alois von und zu Liechtenstein
retaining his right to overrule plebiscites, the government said
today on its website after all the votes were counted. Eighty-three percent of eligible voters participated, it said.

The prince angered some residents when he threatened in
August to use his veto should the electorate support a campaign
to legalize abortion. Sidelining 44-year-old Alois, whose family
owns Liechtenstein’s biggest bank, would jeopardize the
prosperity that gives the country’s 36,000 residents the world’s
second-highest per capita income after Monaco, according to
royalist lobby group Prince and People.

“It would have dramatic consequences for the future of our
country,” Alexander Batliner, head of the center-right
Progressive Citizens’ Party, which forms a coalition government
with the larger Patriotic Union, said before the poll. “With
this dualism of the prince and the people, our sovereignty is
better protected than if we were a republic.”

The royal family has only exercised the veto once over the
transfer of hunting rights in 1961. When Alois’s father Hans-Adam II warned that he might leave Liechtenstein in 2003, the
electorate granted him more powers in a move the Council of
Europe said was “a serious backward step” for democracy.

“It’s tragic that a large part of the country’s elite,
including famous managers of important companies, fear the
prince’s exodus and with him the country’s success,” Mario
Frick, the former head of government and chairman of the private
bank Frick & Co. AG, said before the vote. “It would be good if
the people get the last say, because under the current situation
the country looks a bit backward.”